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Authors: Joe Haldeman
Tags: Science-Fiction
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here’s five thousand francs. Live it up; stay drunk for at least three days. When you sober up, you will remember absolutely nothing about me.
Bridges burned, I picked up some more money on the way out to Orly. I used the diplomatic papers and my watch to rush through Customs and on to a waiting Concorde. In the air less than three hours after I’d put Mutt and Jeff aboard the train, I was sure I’d be home long before the shit hit the fan. I was wrong.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
NICK
We drove out of Cambridge through increasingly heavy snow, but luckily it abated somewhat in an hour. Richard, the boy I’d abducted, was a good, careful driver, and his van had snow tires. We were able to maintain a steady forty-five miles per hour until about midnight. When he started to yawn and blink, I suggested that we take the next exit and nap for a bit. I didn’t feel I had enough driving experience to take over the wheel in this weather.
I let him sleep for ninety minutes while I read newspapers and drank coffee in an all-night truck stop. Certainly not enough rest for the boy, but I was nervous. It wasn’t likely we were being followed, having been off the interstate since the New Hampshire border, but I didn’t want to press my luck.
Some years ago an IRA terrorist told Margaret Thatcher, “We only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky all the time.” That’s the way I was startingto feel. The KGB would have only limited resources for tracking me down in this country. But as soon as Jacob woke up hung over in a Parisian drunk tank and claimed diplomatic immunity, the real hunt would be on. I wanted to be well camouflaged before the FBI blew the whistle.
I got two very large coffees to go, went out to the van, and shook Richard awake. His body didn’t want to cooperate, so I gave him the “suggestion” that he had just had eight hours of sleep and was full of energy. It worked, but of course it’s not something to be used too often. He chattered incessantly all the way to Bangor, Maine.
All I knew about Maine I learned from Stephen King novels, so it seemed a rather foreboding place. Bangor especially, with all the brooding, large Victorian houses, stark and seeming uninhabited in the early-morning snowscape. But it was a town well suited to my purposes and perhaps to my current mood as well.
If I were totally amoral, I would have taken the easiest and most prudent course and eliminated Richard. Bangor had a convenient river. Instead, I told him to drive to California, taking at least a week. Credit cards were out of the question, of course, so I had to go to a bank and ask for a couple of thousand in used twenties. Then I had to rent him a car (try doing
that
without a credit card!) and take care of his van. I told him to return the car in Los Angeles and then take the bus to Las Vegas; then fly back to Boston and phone home from the airport, remembering nothing since the night he walked into the Greek bar. They might just possibly link me with a convenient amnesia victim, but there was no way they could follow the trail back to Bangor. Especially since I arranged forhis van to be parked on a side street in upstate New York.
I began to put into motion a plan whose details I had been mulling over for several years. The greatest danger I faced was being recognized from a distance, too great a distance for the device to work. So I started a program that would radically and permanently change my physical appearance.
First I shaved off my beard, then cut my sixties-style long hair down to a crew and bleached it. I traded in my bifocals for blue-tinted contact lenses (which I had been carrying and using in secret for some years), and bought a shabby working-man’s wardrobe at Goodwill. Sunlamp for an outdoorsy look. Then I set about losing some of the fifty pounds of fat I’d collected at Cambridge. Fasting on fruit juice, vitamins, and phenylalanine, with some light exercise.
In a month or so I would be ready to head
Bridges burned, I picked up some more money on the way out to Orly. I used the diplomatic papers and my watch to rush through Customs and on to a waiting Concorde. In the air less than three hours after I’d put Mutt and Jeff aboard the train, I was sure I’d be home long before the shit hit the fan. I was wrong.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
NICK
We drove out of Cambridge through increasingly heavy snow, but luckily it abated somewhat in an hour. Richard, the boy I’d abducted, was a good, careful driver, and his van had snow tires. We were able to maintain a steady forty-five miles per hour until about midnight. When he started to yawn and blink, I suggested that we take the next exit and nap for a bit. I didn’t feel I had enough driving experience to take over the wheel in this weather.
I let him sleep for ninety minutes while I read newspapers and drank coffee in an all-night truck stop. Certainly not enough rest for the boy, but I was nervous. It wasn’t likely we were being followed, having been off the interstate since the New Hampshire border, but I didn’t want to press my luck.
Some years ago an IRA terrorist told Margaret Thatcher, “We only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky all the time.” That’s the way I was startingto feel. The KGB would have only limited resources for tracking me down in this country. But as soon as Jacob woke up hung over in a Parisian drunk tank and claimed diplomatic immunity, the real hunt would be on. I wanted to be well camouflaged before the FBI blew the whistle.
I got two very large coffees to go, went out to the van, and shook Richard awake. His body didn’t want to cooperate, so I gave him the “suggestion” that he had just had eight hours of sleep and was full of energy. It worked, but of course it’s not something to be used too often. He chattered incessantly all the way to Bangor, Maine.
All I knew about Maine I learned from Stephen King novels, so it seemed a rather foreboding place. Bangor especially, with all the brooding, large Victorian houses, stark and seeming uninhabited in the early-morning snowscape. But it was a town well suited to my purposes and perhaps to my current mood as well.
If I were totally amoral, I would have taken the easiest and most prudent course and eliminated Richard. Bangor had a convenient river. Instead, I told him to drive to California, taking at least a week. Credit cards were out of the question, of course, so I had to go to a bank and ask for a couple of thousand in used twenties. Then I had to rent him a car (try doing
that
without a credit card!) and take care of his van. I told him to return the car in Los Angeles and then take the bus to Las Vegas; then fly back to Boston and phone home from the airport, remembering nothing since the night he walked into the Greek bar. They might just possibly link me with a convenient amnesia victim, but there was no way they could follow the trail back to Bangor. Especially since I arranged forhis van to be parked on a side street in upstate New York.
I began to put into motion a plan whose details I had been mulling over for several years. The greatest danger I faced was being recognized from a distance, too great a distance for the device to work. So I started a program that would radically and permanently change my physical appearance.
First I shaved off my beard, then cut my sixties-style long hair down to a crew and bleached it. I traded in my bifocals for blue-tinted contact lenses (which I had been carrying and using in secret for some years), and bought a shabby working-man’s wardrobe at Goodwill. Sunlamp for an outdoorsy look. Then I set about losing some of the fifty pounds of fat I’d collected at Cambridge. Fasting on fruit juice, vitamins, and phenylalanine, with some light exercise.
In a month or so I would be ready to head
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